A 1966 interview with Carl Sagan (Professor of Astronomy, and Director, Laboratory for Planetary Studies, Cornwell University) and Thornton Page (Professor of Astronomy, Wesleyan university, and Research associate, NASA Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston). Carl Sagan argues that there is no evidence pointing towards the possibility that some Flying saucers are space vehicles from advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, as there are too many UFO visits per day…rather Psychology and Theology roots and not so much the physics of science…

Three years later (December 1969), a symposium on UFOs, sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was held in Boston. Some 16 scientists (among others Frank D. Drake, J. Allen Hynek, Philip Morrison, Walter Sullivan, C. Sagan and T. Page…) participated to the event and contributed their papers to a book that was edited by Sagan and Page and published in 1972.  This book constitutes an excellent historical reading on the topic, from which I would like to quote a statement that has not aged:

“…The idea of benign or hostile super beings from other planets visiting the earth clearly belongs in such a list of emotion-rich ideas. There are two sorts of possible self-deceptions here: Either accepting the idea of extraterrestrial visitation in the face of very meagre evidence because we want it to be true; or rejecting such an idea out of hand, in the absence of sufficient evidence, because we don’t want it to be true. Each of these extremes is a serious impediment to the study of UFO; they affect different categories of people.”